P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
-
The Tea Party has definitely increased political involvement, not only among Tea Party members but among people who oppose the Tea Party members. It's been a general stimulus.
-
Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it's got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It's not pretty. But it's striking, I'll give it that. It's not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.
-
You don't despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.
-
More modern poetry is written than read.
-
In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune ideals. He is nevertheless very dear to me.
-
Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.
-
The 18,000 NASA employees are full of galactic talents and abilities and are ready to accomplish whatever they're directed to do.
-
In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'
-
Everybody in America who didn't come over the Bering Strait ice bridge stole his land from somebody else.
-
Now, do I think the baby boomers tend to be self-absorbed? I do.
-
America is the world's policeman, all right -- a big, dumb, mick flatfoot in the middle of the one thing cops dread most, a "domestic disturbance.
-
Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.
-
Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.
-
Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.
-
If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.
-
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
-
We all know the types who listen to Pete Seeger songs; even Pete admits they aren't interesting.
-
Are you a Democrat because you're a union member? Then why, after eight years of Bill Clinton, does some Chinese guy in Guangdong province have your job?
-
Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.
-
President Obama has contempt for real money.
-
The killjoys initiated automobile crash standards so rigorous that we can't buy a car that hasn't been dropped from the top of a phone pole with our whole family strapped inside.
-
Liberals have invented whole college majors - psychology, sociology and women's studies - to prove that nothing is anybody's fault.
-
Woodstock had a tremendous impact on American artistic life.